the puzzle that is nico diangelo
by zoeawwrites
Summary: Boys and emotions aren't new to Will Solace. He can read almost everyone like a book within a day of knowing them. But Nico DiAngelo, he can't figure out. That is, until Nico begins to let him. Prompt: " 'How are you feeling' 'I don't have feelings. I take them to an abyss deep within my soul and throw them off a cliff.' 'That was oddly specific.'" but too angsty. Plz review! :)


**Hey all! So this is my first Percy Jackson fanfic! To all those (if any) coming from my stranger things fics, hi! I will be back to Stranger Things (hopefully) soon, but I have this fic, another Percy Jackson (percabeth) fic I'm planning to write, and after that, a Brooklyn 99 fic. I've had a lot of inspo lately, so... Basically, this story started when I was texting a friend about how much inspo we had and pretty much no outlet or time, so at midnight, I asked my friend to give me two or three prompts to choose from, and I chose this one: "How are you feeling?" "I don't have feelings. I take them to an abyss deep within my soul and throw them off a cliff." "That was oddly specific." So, seems pretty lighthearted, but I turned it into a crappy, unnecessarily angsty fic for pretty much no reason at all. It took me two hours which is kind of sad considering the awful quality, but whatever. It's 2 am rn so kind of just wanna get this thing published. Anyway, here goes! Hope you enjoy! :)**

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Boys weren't new to me. No, but really, they weren't.

In fact, it got to the point were boys were a little too… predictable. Whether it was just a friend, a careless hookup, or an actual relationship, I had seen enough and known enough to understand pretty well what was going to happen. My exes? Still my friends. I had known before they broke up with me that they were going to, and made sure every breakup ended mutually. My friends? Couldn't slip anything past me. The second Percy and Annabeth came back from their very first quest, I knew that they were, as corny as it was, "endgame." I knew Jason would go out heroically long before he did, and that Leo was going to return as he always would, and that Luke was truly good and going to save the war the second the words "family" left Annabeth's mouth.

But Nico DiAngelo? He was a mystery that I couldn't even solve.

For one thing, I had no idea why the hell Nico thought that everyone pretty much hated him. Normally I could figure out some insecurity, some issue, some drama that was behind it all, but Nico? Nothing.

"It's because he's a Hades kid," the other kids in his cabin grumbled when I started the rants, growing increasingly frustrated over the fact that I just couldn't get it. But I knew that that wasn't it. And it stumped me and frustrated me to the bone.

The three days after Gaia's awakening were spent tending to campers, rebuilding camp, and stressing out about why the hell Nico was the way he was. The days after that were spent WITH Nico, as a very secretly elated me learned that Nico didn't like Annabeth, as most of the camp suspected, but Percy! (I couldn't help but get a little giddy with excitement when I found this fact out, and then wondered why the hell was I so giddy, with a classically Will Solace "OH!" moment following right after that.)

But still.

Nico DiAngelo was impossible to read. I had started, just barely, to figure it out a whopping three months after the war (a week or two after we started dating.)

"Hey Nico," I smiled, joining the son of Hades at his empty table. I had gotten permission to sit with Nico for breakfast and sometimes dinner, the rest of the time having to  
(ugh) sit with the rest of the Apollo cabin.

"Hi," Nico responded, turning up the corner of his mouth in response.

"How are you feeling this morning?"

"I don't have feelings. I take them to an abyss deep within my soul and throw them off a cliff."

"That was oddly specific," I nodded, not sure if he was joking or not. (In my defense, you couldn't really tell with Nico.)

"I'm not kidding."

"Oh." I nodded curtly.

"Let me guess, you want me to keep going?"

"Kind of."

Nico turned to stare at me, onyx eyes meeting those of sky.

"No."

"Nicoooo, come on," I whined, leaning towards him, grabbing his forearm. "You can't lead me on like that!" Nico rolled his eyes, turning back to his piece of toast. "Pleeeeeaaase?" I begged, giving him his best puppy dog eyes. "Neeks, you know you can trust me… right?" my lighthearted, pleading tone changing into a gentle and serious one. Nico's stance hardened.

"Can I?" he asked quietly, voice not quite breaking but cracking, his dark eyes filling with pain. I gently moved his arm to Nico's hand, grabbing it close in his own.

"Yes." I wanted to continue, to say that I wasn't going to push him away, and that I cared about him, and that I wanted him in his life, but I also knew that Nico wouldn't appreciate that. He just needed the plain and simple truth.

Nico took a shaky breath in, nodding slowly. "Hold on."

"What?"

"Just don't let go."

"Nico, what are you-" my voice was interrupted by darkness, shivers going up my spine, and cold voices and laughter whispering through the night. I felt chilled to the bone, the life literally being sucked out of me, and then suddenly the darkness melted, and they were alone. They were in a small cave, dimly lit by the -glowing?- crystals that stuck out of the rocks. The ceiling was low, maybe a foot from my head, and the floor was rocky, but at least it was solid. My knees buckled as he fell onto the ground, Nico rushing towards me in response, grabbing me hand to help him up.

"What was that?" I whispered, my voice shaky as I dusted myself off.

"Shadow travel," Nico answered bluntly, looking around us.

"Th-that was-" my voice gave out. A million things popped into my head, from telling him NEVER to shadow travel again, to asking him how the hell did he do that, but I stopped myself before any sound came out. A doctor wasn't what Nico needed right now.

"This is a cave I found a while back. Not sure quite where it is geographically, but I know where to find it," Nico told me, sitting down. He was quiet for a minute, the two of us in the tiny cave listening to the other's breathing. I looked up at Nico imploringly, Nico sighing and beginning to fidget in response. Nico wasn't like other demigods in most cases, but in the ADHD department, he was just like everyone else.

"I lost my mom when I was ten." Nico began, the words spilling out and echoing throughout the space. While the cave was tiny, maybe five or 6 yards across both ways, it felt like the largest space in the world.

"It's arguable, to say the least, whether my father was ever truly there. All I had was Bianca, who was, like me, young and scared out of her mind at the time," he continued as I listened intently.

"Then I lost my home and my world. I was born in 1924. Nineteen twenty four. I was pushed into the Lotus Casino in 1934, and pulled out in 2007. That's 73 years of my life that were taken from me. I was ejected into a 21st century would with 20th century views and memories and was left in an unrecognizable world. The only, only thing that I had was my sister." He swallowed, pulling out a pocket knife and beginning to scrape the rock floor with it, etching lines and symbols and letters.

"And then I lost her too." His voice broke as he did, his back sinking against the cave wall. I surged over to him, sitting next to him and wrapping him in a warm embrace, black hair sinking onto my muscular shoulder. Hot droplets of anger and pain escaped Nico's eyes, dripping against the cave floor one by one as I whispered small words of comfort and care, and Nico felt like he could be safe like that, forever.

"And then there was Percy," he resumed, his breathing returning to normal but not leaving my arms. "Who I so much more than admired. I was young, I was stupid… I was 10. And Percy was thirteen, and he knew so much about the world, and his determination and his eyes, those fucking eyes…" Nico trailed off, fists balling up. "I didn't know why I felt that way. And when I realized, when I began to hate myself from the inside out because my whole 83 years of life before that, I grew up thinking that I was wrong, so wrong, for being whoever the hell I was and loving whoever the fuck I was. And when he told me that he lost her… it broke me. It felt like the universe was trying to tell me that I was a sin, that I was wrong and awful for feeling the way I did about him, and I took it out on him, because it was HIS fault for everything. For losing my sister. For those eyes, those goddamn eyes."

"And I hated myself. I hated the world… I still do a lot. I hated myself for still liking Percy, for wanting to protect him and for caring about him because if he were anyone else, I would have killed him, KILLED HIM, for what he had done. But I couldn't, and I resented myself for it. I resented him for it. I resented my dad, for everything, and the gods, and the world."

I pulled him closer. While I hadn't experienced even a quarter of Nico's pain, hating or being ashamed of myself for who I loved was something I was quite familiar with.

"And then I found Hazel. And I was ok… for a little while. Until Percy Jackson waltzed into Camp Jupiter, not a single part of him remaining except for those I hated the most… Annabeth and his eyes. So I had to leave. I was reckless… I didn't think anything worse could happen to me…" his voice died in his throat, eyes filling with fear.

I gently kissed his forehead, reassuring him that I wasn't pushing him away. "I'm here," I whispered to him, letting him know that even if he had to go through all this alone, he didn't have to anymore.

"I fell into Tartarus." My breath hitched. He had barely heard anything from Percy and Annabeth, and it was horrible enough. And they were together.

Nico was alone.

"I can't even begin to go into what I saw there… and it will take me a long, long time before I'll be able to, I think," he whispered.

"It's ok," I murmured. "Whenever you are ready. I'm always here."

He nodded, pressed against me, his head resting on my chest, my heart thumping.

"Then the jar… and finally getting out and having to look those sea green eyes in the face and say thank you," he whispered in disgust. "And then Jason found out. And I thought that it would make everything so much worse, but… it didn't. He was so supportive, Will… I guess I had forgotten that people could be like that. And I started, just barely, to hate Percy a little less. And when he fell… I took the blame for it. I hated myself, I hated that I ruined everything I touched, that I was just destined for pain and there was no way out of it," he began to ramble, his voice rising in volume and pitch, his breathing growing faster and heavier as he began to send himself into a state of panic. "Hey, hey, hey… breathe. It's ok. It's ok," I instructed as my arms tightened around him.

"You are not destined for pain. You deserve to be happy. You always have, and you always will. I care about you, Nico. I'm worried sick about you because I care. I care so much. I'm not going to push you away. I can't promise you that I won't hurt you, but I can easily promise that I will never hurt you on purpose. You don't deserve pain. You shouldn't hide your feelings in an abyss, or throw them off a cliff. You should be who you are, feel what you feel. Because you are incredible, Nico. You are incredible," I whispered, taking two fingers and putting them under his chin, tilting his face so that he was looking up at me.

"You are incredible," I told him firmly one last time. I gently leaned in towards him, he doing the same, and suddenly our lips had met, and It was like the world was good again. Like the boy in front of me hadn't experienced far, far, far more than his fair share of sorrow in the world.

And maybe, just maybe, I would finally begin to solve the not-so-complicated puzzle that is Nico DiAngelo.

The trick?

Love.

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**That's it! It is vv cringey so I apologize, idk why I did it but too late now ig. Please review! If it's constructive criticism, a question, or even just a smiley face, please ask me because I would love to answer! Hopefully I can get the Percabeth and B99 story out before I have to go back to the states, planning to get one of them done over the next three days in Israel and the other in the week I am in Italy, but with my stranger things stories I say a couple of weeks and I'm on haitus for literally a year. Whoops. **

**Anyway,**

**xoxo, Zoë :)**


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